Re:How Do Computers Generate Random Numbers?
by rmrfstar on Monday September 14, 2020 @03:53PM
(#24474356)
Facts I looked up to understand this comment:
* Bias in a bit-stream means any deviation from IID Bernoulli trials with p=0.5
* Von Neumann whitening addresses the IID Bernoulli case for p!=0.5 by looking at bit pairs. It takes the first bit when they differ, and no bits when they match. This works because (1,0) and (0,1) both occur with equal probability p(1-p).
* Bias in a bit-stream means any deviation from IID Bernoulli trials with p=0.5
* Von Neumann whitening addresses the IID Bernoulli case for p!=0.5 by looking at bit pairs. It takes the first bit when they differ, and no bits when they match. This works because (1,0) and (0,1) both occur with equal probability p(1-p).
* NIST wrote a remarkably accessible document [1]
[1] https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/publications/sp/800-90b/dra...